BOOK: JFK 'Admired' Hitler

24 May 2013

A new book, John F. Kennedy – Among the Germans, reveals that in the pre-World War II era, when young John F. Kennedy Jr. tooled around Europe, there was one leader and one governmental system he particularly admired: Germany and Nazism. In his journals, eh wrote, “Fascism? The right thing for Germany.” He added, “What are the evils of fascism compared to communism?”

Just two years before World War II broke out, Kennedy wrote, “The Germans really are too good – therefore people have ganged up on them to protect themselves.” He also wrote, “The Nordic races certainly seem to be superior to the Romans.”

And with regard to Hitler: “Hitler will emerge from the hatred currently surrounding him to emerge in a few years as one of the most important personalities that ever lived.”

Kennedy’s father, Joseph Kennedy, was an admirer of Hitler’s as well. Kennedy’s admiration for Hitler verged on the rapturous: “His boundless ambition for his country made him a threat to peace in the world, but he had something mysterious about him,” Kennedy wrote after the war. “He was the stuff of legends.”